Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has signed a multimillion pound contract with a Saudi Arabian oil company to broker secret deals on the firm’s behalf with Chinese state officials, it has emerged.

Tony Blair Associates,
an umbrella company owned by the former Labour leader, now a
Middle East envoy, agreed in November 2010 to organize deals
between oil company PetroSaudi and elite Chinese officials, a
leaked contract seen by The Sunday Times suggests.

The deals were to be arranged during Blair’s visit to the Chinese
capital of Beijing in November that year.

While the contract was in place, PetroSaudi reportedly paid Bair
£41,000 a month to carry out these duties, and added a lucrative
2 percent cut of each successfully orchestrated agreement to the
former prime minister’s paycheck.

PetroSaudi was reportedly informed it could not reveal Blair’s
role in the business arrangement without permission. Despite the
firm’s insistence the deal would remain shrouded in secrecy, the
contract was leaked.

The disclosure marks the first commercial contract relating to
Blair’s business deals to be revealed to the public, and provides
evidence he is working for a Middle Eastern oil company.

It also raises questions over the former PM’s role as Middle East
envoy and his personal vested interests in the region. The former
Labour leader faces allegations he has deployed contacts gleaned
through his diplomatic work in the Middle East for his own
personal gain.

PetrolSaudi, conveniently registered in the Cayman Islands as a
means of avoiding a Saudi Arabian 85 percent tax rate, was
founded by a son of Saudi King Abdullah and a Saudi businessman.

A senior source based at the oil firm told the Sunday Times that
Blair’s links to the Middle East run deep. Referencing the leaked
contract, the source said the firm knows a lot of similar people
to Blair who put the company in touch with him.

“It was a confidential engagement to help us develop business
in China,” the source added.

The leaked contract, obtained by the Sunday Times, reveals
Blair’s umbrella firm was hired by PetroSaudi to source new
investment opportunities.

Central to the agreement was the condition Blair would make
“introductions to the senior political leadership, industrial
policymakers, corporate entities and other persons in China”
deemed to be “relevant to PetroSaudi’s international
strategy.”

Following revelations surrounding the covert deal, Oliver Miles,
a former UK ambassador to Libya who has called for Blair to be
removed from his role as Middle East peace envoy, said he should
disclose his financial interests in the region.

In June, a campaign calling for Blair’s Middle East envoy role to
be relinquished gathered momentum following the former PM’s
efforts to shun responsibility for the ongoing crisis in Iraq.

A letter, signed by multiple high profile political UK figures,
warned Britain’s 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the rise of
“fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed
previously.”

Signatories of the letter, including former Libya envoy Miles,
Blair’s former ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton, former
London mayor Ken Livingstone and human rights barrister Michael
Mansfield QC, denounced the Blair’s accomplishments as Middle
East envoy as “negligible."

Probed on the leaked contract between Tony Blair Associates and
PetrolSaudi, Blair’s office told The Sunday Times that his work
for the oil company was only “for a period of months”
and had nothing to do with the Middle East.